


accompagnato

by valety



Category: Uncommon Time (Video Game)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Past Abuse, Other, POV Second Person, Slice of Life, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 08:05:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7793815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valety/pseuds/valety
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A day spent playing in the snow and contemplating different ways of offering support.</p>
            </blockquote>





	accompagnato

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for references to past abuse and codependency 
> 
> this fic is set during the true ending. it's not particularly spoilery, but proceed with caution just in case

Upon the World Tuning’s completion, the five of you appear to be in mutual agreement that the remainder of your time in Harmonia ought to be spent on play. After months of dangerous travel, excessive stress, and nigh-torturous rehearsals, there’s no question that you’ve earned a little rest.

Unfortunately, none of you seem able to agree on what exactly that entails.

Meirin is adamant that play means _play._

“We have to frolic!” she insists one morning at breakfast, when the five of you are gathered at the too-long dining table for a meal of strawberry crepes. You wonder then if she prepared them specifically to try and butter you up. “You’re only young once! You gotta take advantage of that by doing stupid, pointless things as much as possible while you still can!”

“Mm, I believe I’ll pass,” Saki says over a cup of coffee, smiling apologetically. “My time for such a carefree youth has long since passed, you see.”

“Oh, please, you’re not _that_ much older than us,” Meirin retorts, popping a strawberry into her mouth and narrowing her eyes. “Stop using that as an excuse when what you really mean is that you’d rather stay inside. It’s not like any of us will judge you.”

“Can you blame me?” Saki asks, his usually beatific expression turning petulant. “We just spent _weeks_ hiking back and forth over snowy mountains, battling monsters and spirits alike, not to mention camping out in _caves._ Now that we’re finally free to rest somewhere warm and comfortable, I’d like to actually do so.”

“And so you may,” Meirin grants, adopting a magnanimous air, and Saki bows his head in apparent thanks. “We wouldn’t want you wearing yourself out before we’ve even had time to properly explore all that Bel Canto has to offer, after all.”

She waggles her eyebrows as she says this. Heat rushes to your cheeks, but you stifle the embarrassed giggle that threatens to escape by taking a long, careful sip of your tea.

“What about you three, though?” Meirin asks, turning to your end of the table. “None of you have Saki’s excuse.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Teagan says. “I’m not really in the mood for rolling around in the snow or whatever it is you want to do. I’d rather get caught up on my reading.”

Meirin narrows her eyes. “You _would,_ wouldn’t you?” she demands accusingly.

“What does that even _mean?”_

But Meirin ignores her, instead turning to you and Alto. “How about you two?” she asks, and there’s a note of pleading in her voice.

Habit almost causes you to decline immediately. Fortunately, you catch yourself in time and instead manage to stutter out, “W-well…maybe it would be fun?”

“Really?” Meirin cries, eyes lighting up. “Oh, _hell_ yes! This is gonna be great! Playing in the snow by yourself as an adult is just kinda sad, but now we can have a snowball fight, and a snowman building contest, and—”

You stop listening. Already your mind is swimming with romantic images of you and Alto enjoying the winter weather together. Brushing snowflakes from each other’s hair, skating on a frozen pond (surely Bel Canto has one _some_ where), holding hands for warmth (you make a mental note to lose your gloves), staying out until evening so that you can watch the snowflakes glisten as they fall by the lamplight…

Your hopes are dashed when Alto asks, “Do people really do those things? Why?”

Across from you, Teagan purses her lips. Saki’s serene expression remains unchanging, although he _does_ set down his coffee cup. Meirin looks almost as startled as you feel, but she appears to collect herself much faster than you do, saying, “Yeah, they do! Playing in the snow is the best part of winter, you know.”

“Is it?” Alto asks, looking pensive. She frowns slightly, adding, “I thought it was just little kids who did that kind of stuff. I remember seeing children playing from my window sometimes, or from the carriage when I had to go into town, but it was always _village_ children, and I thought that…maybe I…”

She trails off.

The silence that follows is a grim one, although only Teagan has the expression to match. She’s frowning, a hard look in her eyes, and for moment, you’re afraid that she’s preparing to spit out something accusatory. She hasn’t done so in a while, but the fear is always there, and you’re not sure what you’d do if that should ever happen again. Nothing, most likely, although you’d like to think that you’d stand up for Alto this time, despite the way your heart is squeezing under your ribs.

Finally, Saki breaks the silence by saying, “It can be fun for grown-ups too, you know. I just don’t enjoy the cold very much, myself.”

“Saki’s right!” Meirin chimes in. “Most grown-ups just like pretending that they’re too _mature_ for this kind of thing, but _we’re_ not like that, are we?”

And here she shoots a meaningful glare at Teagan, who snaps, “I didn’t even _say_ anything!”

“It might be fun,” you add redundantly. You feel foolish almost immediately after doing so. There’s no reason for you to have spoken up at all, least of all with such an inane statement, but you wanted to feel helpful, you suppose.

Alto stares into her coffee cup a moment longer, but finally she smiles.

“Maybe you’re right,” she says cheerfully. “Maybe I’ll enjoy it.”

She resumes eating, which Saki and Meirin appear to take as their cue to continue as well. Teagan’s own expression smooths over a moment later, and in a perfectly neutral tone, she asks, “Does this place have any proper winter clothing lying around? You’ll need better gloves if you’ll be playing in the snow.”

“I don’t mind the cold,” Alto says simply. “I like it. And my gloves are fine.”

“I know, but it’s one thing to not mind the cold and another thing entirely to be sticking your bare skin in the snow,” Teagan replies. “Direct contact can cause frostbite, and that’s no fun.”

Alto hums thoughtfully. Then, her expression brightens. “Oh, yes, I remember you telling me about that before,” she says in that too-light tone she so often adopts when ribbing on Teagan. “You got it on your ears when we were twelve, didn’t you? Wasn’t that why you started wearing hats so often?”  

“That wasn’t my fault,” Teagan protests. Meirin snickers, but the corners of Teagan’s mouth are twitching too. “Tristan dunked my head in the snow.”

Somehow, the heavy atmosphere dissipates entirely, and you are left to quietly finish the remains of your breakfast.

For a moment, you feel something almost like disappointment. Not because the crisis you had feared was so neatly averted: you wouldn’t be so petty as to resent Teagan for restraining herself. But you feel as though an opportunity has been lost, an opportunity to show Alto just how brave and supportive you can really be when the situation calls for it, and now, here you are, watching awkwardly as the others smooth things over once again. Once again you’ve relegated yourself to the role of silent outsider, speaking up only to echo that which has already been said. Once again you’ve failed to be the Aubrey Spica that you want to be.

It’s almost enough for you to set down your knife and fork and make some polite excuse so that you can escape all of the cheerful conversation. But then Alto’s hand finds yours under the table, and although that almost makes things worse—although a part of you is ashamed to still require comfort from the one you should be comforting—you lace your fingers with hers tightly, grateful for a reason that you cannot find it in yourself to voice.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

While Saki and Teagan clean up the remains of breakfast, you, Alto, and Meirin begin your hunt for proper winter clothing. It’s no longer cold enough to warrant any of your mountain gear, but Alto finds a storage closet from which the three of you are able to cobble together suitable snowy day outfits. By the time you emerge, all three of you have gloves and boots, Meirin has a purple scarf that she’d deemed stylish, and Alto has a blue knit cap that she insists you take from her.   

“You’ll need it more,” she explains, holding it out to you. “Meirin and I have fire magic. We can warm ourselves up if we have to.”

“I have _ice_ magic and we will be playing in the _snow_ ,” you dryly retort. “I think I shall be fine.”

“Well, true, but also, this hat has a pompom on it,” Alto says, tweaking the pompom in question. “I bet you’ll look really, really cute wearing it.”

You end up wearing the hat. Alto looks as pleased as the cat that got the cream, if that’s an idiom that’s still in use; you’re not sure. You’ll have to look it up. You don’t want to embarrass yourself by throwing it out in casual conversation only to have everybody look at you like you’re an alien. That’s already happened to you twice, and you’d rather it not happen a third time.

“Have fun, you three,” Saki tells you in the foyer. “Teagan and I shall have warm drinks waiting when you get back.”

“He means that we’ll be drinking them ourselves in the library and you can have whatever’s left when you get in,” Teagan adds.

“Well, yes, that _is_ sort of what I meant, but I don’t mind making more should the need arise,” Saki says. Meirin and Alto laugh, and you do your best to chime in with a polite laugh as well.

The early morning sunlight likely would have been almost blinding on the snow were it not for the cover provided by the low-hanging clouds. The courtyard itself seems frozen silver, bringing to mind the surface of the moon. What snow still falls does so softly, feather-light and clean; no footsteps mar the pristine white blanket they leave behind, although Meirin soon take cares of that, running ahead of you and Alto with her arms spread wide. Alto follows readily, and you do the same, pacing your longer stride so that you stay beside her, boots crunching with every step.

“It’s sticky!” Meirin cries, having grabbed a handful of snow. “It’s been so long since we had sticky snow—it’s been dry as bone all winter!”

“That’s probably a side effect of the World Tuning,” Alto comments. She bends at the waist to collect some snow as well, awkwardly carrying a small white mound in her hands before following Meirin’s example and rolling it into a small ball. “The weather just kept getting colder before, so it was dry. But now that it’s begun to warm up a little, the snow is changing.”

“Ah…Meirin?” you venture. You raise your hand a bit, then quickly lower it. You’re not a child who needs permission to speak, you remind yourself. “What exactly did you want to do? You mentioned several different activities before, but…”

Meirin pauses, frowning at the snowball in her hand. “I’m not sure, exactly,” she confesses. “I think snowball fights are pretty standard, though.”

“Yes, I’d say so,” you reply, relieved. You’d been worried that she would want to do something that you’re unfamiliar with, something that had only manifested in the past few hundred years or so, but you know about snowball fights. You have no practical experience, having so often refused to join the others as a child, but they can’t be particularly difficult to carry out, can they? “That might be a good place to—”

Before you can finish your sentence, Meirin’s snowball goes flying and strikes you square in the chest.

“Nice arc, Meirin,” Alto says approvingly as you gaze down at your soaked bolero, appalled.

Meirin is grinning cheekily at you when you lift your head, but her grin quickly fades.

“Uh oh,” she says, looking alarmed. “Aubrey has a scary look on their face.”

In the end, it’s decided that challenging a mage with a talent for water and ice to a snowball fight was a foolish thing for Meirin to do, and the battle is unceremoniously called off.

“That was just unfair,” Meirin grumbles as she brushes the snow from her hair. Her bun had tumbled loose during the brawl, giving her matching twintails. The symmetry is bizarrely unsettling, coming from Meirin. “No one told me Aubrey was some secret snowball wizard.”

“I don’t think anyone should have had to,” Alto says from the place beneath a nearby fir tree where she had watched the carnage ensue with an eager smile on her face. She’s still holding a snowball of her own, carefully patting it, smoothing it down into something almost perfectly round. “I think it was established long ago, in fact.”

“I apologize, Meirin,” you say. In fact, you don’t feel sorry at all. Instead, you feel rather viciously proud at having been able to best her, even if a tiny part of you feels self-conscious over being proud of such a thing. “I got carried away.”

“ _I’ll_ say you did,” she retorts. “But hey, we should do that again sometime. With _everyone._ If we’re all using our powers, the fight’ll be incredible!”

“What would Teagan do?” you ask. You briefly imagine her trying to punch a snowball only for it to explode upon contact with her first. You nearly choke with a suppressed burst of laughter.

“I wouldn’t worry about Teagan,” Alto says breezily. “She’s fit, so I’m sure she’d have no trouble dodging and throwing. By the way, that’s all you have to do, right?”

“Right,” Meirin confirms, and before you can say a word yourself, Alto throws her almost-perfect snowball at your chest, directly hitting the same spot Meirin had struck you earlier.

 _“Alto!”_ you wail. “Not you too!”

“Fight me,” she says eagerly, smile turning sharp. She’s already bending down to once again collect a handful of snow. “Meirin’s tired, so she can sit this one out. But I watched you two and I think I know what I’m doing, so I want to try it myself.”

You don't want to use the full extent of your powers against Alto, not even if she asks you to, and so the torrent of snow that had overtaken Meirin remains dormant. But you hum a simple melody that sculpts the snow at your feet for you, crafting snowballs faster than you can yourself, and do your best to pelt them at Alto properly.

You've been stronger ever since you started using Luthier, but unfortunately, you're not yet on the same level as Alto: although your aim is decent, she's faster than you are, able to duck and weave and dodge with surprising agility. "Enough," you finally gasp, pressing a hand against your chest. Your breathing is ragged, but you're laughing despite yourself—a true laugh, not a giggle summoned to put someone at ease or win them over, and it makes your chest hurt more than the wheezing does. "Enough! I concede."

"Already?" Alto asks, practically smirking despite the heaving of her own chest. Her face is flushed with exertion. Beneath the fir tree, Meirin is clapping energetically, having apparently made a full recovery while watching you two.

You can’t recall the last time that you laughed like this, even with Alto, and that makes your chest hurt even more, albeit for a different reason.

"We should have a rematch," you say on a whim.  "Not now...too tired...but some other day."  
  
"Some other day?" Alto repeats, looking confused.  
  
You nod before sucking in a full, deep breath. "We will be here for a few months," you manage to say, this time without spluttering or wheezing. "There will be plenty of opportunities for us to play before we leave. I'll be sure to get you then!"  
  
"Oh," Alto says, and her confusion vanishes, buried by the light of recognition. "Oh!"  
  
"Is something wrong?" you ask, now feeling puzzled yourself. She doesn’t seem to be upset, but you can’t think what you said to warrant such a response.

"No! The opposite, actually," Alto replies. "I...I think I'm used to thinking of good things as temporary, one-time things. And this is too, in a way, but not like it used to be. Winter may come to an end, but it's not as though this has to be the only time I’ll ever spend with any of you. I think I’m finally starting to grasp that.”

"I'm glad," you say earnestly, mouth curving into a smile that reflects Alto’s own. "You deserve to have things like this. You deserve to have fun sometimes, not to simply work and plan."

“I’d like it if you could be there with me for those sometimes,” Alto says, and it’s not _shy_ exactly, but there’s something hesitant about the way she says it all the same, as though even now, she can’t quite believe that such a thing is possible for her.

“I’d like that too,” you say, and Alto’s expression softens.

She takes a step towards you, and for a moment, you forget that Meirin is there with you. It's as though you've slipped into one of your silly romantic fantasies from breakfast, in which the two of you are alone together in the falling snow, the world around you utterly forgotten, and then Alto lifts a hand to your hair, just below your ridiculous hat, and you feel your cheeks grow warm, and your heart begin to pound, and...  
  
"Okay, lovebirds, we have a snowman to make," Meirin interrupts. "If you'd rather be doing something else, you should probably head inside so that you don't get frostbite anywhere awkward."  
  
Alto bursts out laughing. You flush and cry out, "Meirin, _honestly_ _!”_

"Look, I'm not judging," Meirin says calmly, spreading her palms in mock-sincerity. "But if that’s not the case, then I’d appreciate your help with this. I’ve always wanted to make one of my own, not just help with someone else’s, and I think it’d be nice if we all worked on it together.”

You sigh. You suppose the romantic mood has passed, but there's no helping that.

Only then do you hear Meirin’s words. _I’ve always wanted to make my own._

It occurs to you, then—too late, because it’s so easy to forget somehow—that Meirin comes from a noble family as well. You’ve seen her play with town children from time to time, but is that the only practice that she’s ever had? Is she new to this whole _playing_ thing as well?

"What do you need help with, exactly?" Alto asks, walking over to Meirin. Apparently nothing she had said seems curious to Alto, but you suppose it’s only natural that they would understand each other when it comes to things like this. Even if Meirin’s upbringing was kinder than Alto’s was, there are bound to be some things that all children of noble families have in common.

For some reason, you feel a flare of something almost like jealousy.

You brush it aside. Now is not the time. You’re better than this now.

"A snowman," Meirin is repeating. "That's another staple of winter, you know. They’re practically everywhere in Harmonia.”  
  
“A snowman...is that what it sounds like?" Alto asks.  
  
"Uh, that depends what you think it sounds like," Meirin replies, raising an eyebrow. "It's not an animated living snow puppet, if that's what you're thinking."  
  
"I _know_ that," Alto says, frowning. "But is it...is it a...."  
  
She's moving her hands now, furrowing her brow and gesturing in a way that you don't understand, as though trying to physically capture the thought that has escaped her. You go to join them. "It's like a statue made of snow," you explain. "It's made out of piling snowballs on top of each other."  
  
"That would make for an awfully small sculpture," Alto says, dropping her hands.   
  
"You roll the snowballs first," you reply. To demonstrate, you kneel and make a tiny snowball, which you then begin to push. It gets larger fairly quickly, and after a minute or so, you stop rolling. Alto is still watching, apparently fascinated by the process, and you beckon her over.

She comes to stand beside you, and together, you push the ball throughout the courtyard, weaving around the occasional evergreen blocking your path. You smile at each other as you do so, as though making a snowman is just as romantic as your dream of ice skating had been, until finally, the ball stands almost at waist level.

"Good work, you two!" Meirin cheers. She herself has made a ball as well, this one significantly smaller than your own, but still a decent size for a snowman’s middle section.

"Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I've seen these before too,"  Alto comments, eyeing Meirin’s snowball. "They _are_ practically everywhere, aren’t they? And now we stack them on top of each other, right?  
  
"Yup!" Meirin confirms.

Alto puffs out her chest with something like pride, then helps Meirin hoist the second snowball on top of yours. Meanwhile, you sculpt a final piece; a small, round head, which you then set upon the other two.  
  
"How high does this have to go?" Alto asks, standing before the incomplete snowman with her hands on her hips, a calculating expression on her face. "Do we just keep adding snowballs?"  
  
"We could," you say. "But most people stop at three, I believe.”

"What should we add now, Professor Aubrey?" Meirin asks cheerfully.  
  
"Since when am I _professor?_ " you ask.  
  
"Tell us, Professor Aubrey," Alto urges.  
  
"Well..." you begin, willing the heat to vanish from your cheeks. "A face, usually made from pebbles or coal. And arms, made from twigs. And possibly clothing?"

“What should we use for the face?” Meirin asks, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “It’ll be hard to find pebbles in the snow, and the mansion doesn’t use coal.”

“You could melt part of the pathway or the garden,” Alto suggests, pointing to a clearing by the door, far from any trees. “You should be able to find pebbles underneath.”

Meirin blinks, looking surprised. “Really?” she asks. “You don’t mind me working fire magic so close to your house?”

“I trust you,” Alto says simply.

“We’ve both seen you use your magic many times already,” you add, noticing Meirin’s troubled expression. “We know you have excellent control.”

“Aw, shucks…” Meirin chuckles. The worry leaves her eyes, replaced with bashfulness. “I guess I can’t say no to that.”

She kneels in the spot Alto had suggested, tugging off her mittens. A moment later, a small square of land is cleared. The fistful of pebbles she emerges with are damp with melted snow, but still warm enough to sink easily into the snowman’s face.

“What expression should we give them?” you ask.

“Snowmen are usually smiling, aren’t they?” Alto asks. “Let’s give them a frown.”

“Aw...are they unhappy?” Meirin asks from where she’s jamming sticks into the snowman’s torso, creating spindly limbs.

“No, they just don’t always feel like smiling,” Alto says. Already she’s placing pebbles in the shape of a slight frown, giving the snowman a curiously pensive expression.

When she and Meirin are finished, you take a step back with them so that you can admire your work. The snowman is solid, well-built, and its expression is almost stoic, somehow. But it also looks a little lonely, and you find yourself feeling almost sorry for it, until a stroke of inspiration causes you to pluck off your hat and place it on the snowman’s head.

“Oh, good idea!” Meirin cries. Already she’s unwinding the purple scarf from around her neck and draping it over the snowman “Now they won’t be cold!”

You bite back a remark about how it’s made of snow and therefore cold by default in favour of smiling at Meirin, who smiles back, and you think, briefly, how dangerously close you came to missing this. Not simply the future you had not expected for yourself, but a life in which you had people such as this— _good_ people, _earnest_ people—to pass the time with.

That you could have ever thought such things unnecessary feels odd to you now.

“I’d like to give the snowman something as well,” Alto says. “I don’t have any spare clothing to give up, though.”

“A name?” Meirin suggests.

Alto’s eyes widen. “Oh! Good idea,” she says approvingly. “How about...Fred?”

“ _Fred_ the snowman?” Meirin repeats.

“Is that no good?” Alto asks, brow furrowing. “I was thinking of _freddo.”_

“Huh, that’s actually pretty clever! Sorry, it just seemed kind of random,” Meirin apologizes.

Alto doesn’t respond. Instead, she steps forward to make a minute adjustment to the snowman’s pursed mouth. But when she turns around, her eyes are bright, not blind with ugly memories, not a stiff and icy blue.

So that’s all right, then.

It’s funny. For a heartbeat, you’d once more felt that surge of almost-jealousy, some tiny, bitter corner of yourself resenting the fact that someone else should talk so familiarly with Alto, should comfort her and make her eyes shine so bright, should apologize and have their slight forgiven so easily. And yet, you can’t bring yourself to mind for long. It’s hard to mind such things when you’re covered in snow and surrounded by people with scarlet cheek, giggling as they dress a snowman in bits and pieces of their clothing. So you neither quietly retreat into the silence so habitual to you, nor give voice to any unkind thoughts. Instead you say, “I think they probably appreciate the name...doesn’t Fred seem a little happier now?”

There’s a moment of silence in which the three of you simultaneously turn to Fred, who continues to frown, expression stern.

“No,” Meirin says bluntly.

“On the inside, I mean,” you feebly insist.

 _“I_ think they do,” Alto chimes in, and you shoot her a grateful look.

A gloved hand slips into yours, and although the weight of Alto’s palm is familiar to you by now, you find it’s not the same, holding hands without true contact.

You say, “It must be almost noon by now. We ought to go inside for lunch.”

“Thanks a _lot,_ I didn't even notice I was hungry until you said anything,” Meirin complains, mock-pouting. But before you can respond, she turns on her heel and calls out, “Race you back inside!”

Alto doesn’t drop your hand before she takes off running. She simply does so, taking off with pounding footsteps kicking up the snow, and although you’re initially too dazed to do anything but let yourself be dragged along, you find your own legs soon enough and take off running with her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

You and Alto lose, which, according to Meirin, means it’s your job to prepare lunch. But upon entering the kitchen, you find Saki and Teagan already cutting vegetables, and instead retire to your individual bedrooms to change out of your dripping clothing.

Later, when all of you are dry and sitting at the dining table, Teagan places a bowlful of some kind of rice before you. “I saw your snowman,” she says. “It looks depressed.”

“Fred is not depressed,” you reply, perhaps a little stiffly, but not so much so that anyone would notice. You hope. “Fred is simply contemplative.”

Teagan snorts. You almost drop your fork in surprise at having accidentally made her laugh. “Whatever,” she says, passing the final bowl to Alto before taking a seat herself. “Anyway, I was just thinking...I used to help my siblings make snowmen sometimes, so...I’m not actually that bad at it, y’know? So, if...if _Fred_ ever gets lonely, I wouldn’t mind helping make another one, or something.”

“We couldn’t possibly ask you to _roll around in the snow_ with us when you apparently dislike it so much,” Alto answers primly, picking up her fork. “If you want to play with us next time you’re going to have to say so openly.”

Teagan makes a noise that sounds an awful lot like _erk_ , and Meirin makes a noise that sounds an awful lot like _ooooooh,_ but then Teagan shrugs and says, “Well...it seemed like you guys had fun today, so...if you don’t _mind_ me joining in...”

“I wouldn’t call that _saying so openly,_ exactly, but close enough,” Alto replies, and then all attempts at conversation give way to the sound of eating.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

As punishment for having lost the race, you and Alto are sentenced to doing dishes afterwards. Not the worst chore, all things considered; Teagan is meticulous when it comes to cooking, so everything is already fairly tidy, and it gives you and Alto an excuse to huddle close together while you work, which is never something you’d complain about.

Your conversation is pleasant, mild, full of brainstorming ideas for your next official date in between scrubbing plates. But as you are suggesting flying somewhere with Luthier, Alto abruptly says, “Thank you, by the way.”

“For what?” you ask.

“For playing with us today.”

“I didn’t do anything, though,” you say, puzzled. “It was Meirin’s idea. All of it was.”

“Well, yes,” Alto agrees. You frown at her readiness to do so. “I already thanked Meirin, don’t worry.” But then she continues, saying, “I still wanted to thank you, though. Being treated normally and doing normal things is nice. I want people to know what happened to me, and to respect that it means I won’t always be just like them, but I don’t want people constantly walking on eggshells around me either. Knowing that people will support me or stand up for me is good, but I don’t want to feel _pitied,_ either.” She pauses to wring her towel, smiling at you as she does so, one of those brilliant ones that always leaves you feeling a little bit weak in the knees. “I liked that you took the snowball fight with me seriously, but were also willing to show me how to make a snowman without making fun of me or getting flustered. It means a lot, to not be treated like a freak just because I don’t know some things.”

“But you’ve always done the same for me,” you say. You can’t help it; you’re feeling flustered _now,_ and you know, just _know,_ that the blush that you’ve been fighting back all day has once again cropped up. “There’s so much about the modern world that I don’t understand, but you’ve never once acted condescending when I’ve required help. Isn’t it natural that I would do the same for you?”

“Well, maybe,” Alto grants, and her voice adopts a bitter edge. “But who knows? Even decent people can be patronizing with their help sometimes, and it always leaves me feeling guilty, as though it’s _my_ fault for unnerving them by not acting normally enough. You didn’t even seem to think about it, though, and it was...nice. Maybe I’m just biased, though,” she adds, like an afterthought.

“Biased?”

“Because you’re cute,” Alto cheerfully replies, and your face grows hot.

“That’s a pretty poor reason,” you say stiffly, and Alto laughs, leaning forward to nuzzle your cheek with her own. An easy, affectionate gesture that somehow makes your neck grow even hotter.

“It’s good that we managed to find each other,” she says, pulling away. “ _All_ of us. Even if we don’t always understand each other, at least we’re willing to try and be patient. I don’t know how many other people would be willing to do that. I guess it takes an outsider to understand an outsider.”

You dip your hands in the sink, rinsing off the suds.

You say (slowly, your own little revelation), “I suppose this is what it means to support each other, then. Not simply grand gestures or matters of life and death, but patience.”

“Hm, well, I'm not going to say no to grand gestures or matters of life and death either,” Alto says, and you flick the soapy water at her, earning another burst of laughter and a flick of water back.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Over the course of that winter, the courtyard of the manor in Bel Canto gradually becomes populated with an entire village of awkwardly shaped snow people.

You know better than to hope that they’ll be there forever, and yet, as you look out upon them from you window, a part of you begins to feel—with a kind of certainty that’s new to you—that something of them always will be.


End file.
